Passenger Trains > venture food service

Midwest. Are  there  any  Venture   food  service  cars  in  service. Maybe  the  Quincy  train  380?  Are  they  also  doig  double  duty  as  Business Class?  Thanks  if  anyone  knows.
Long  live  Amfleet!!

Saw a video on YT last fall with a Venture food service car in use, on the "Wolverine"service and the Business Class was in a separate car . The seating in the FSC seemed to be coach seating .

Yes, the Venture Food Service cars are in regular service. I am in Michigan, so I see them on the Pere Marquette, Wolverine, and Blue Water, but of course they are on the Illinois trains as well. 

No, food service cars do not have business class seating in them. The food service cars have coach seating in them. 

The Venture cars come in four flavors. Most have drawbars at one end, instead of a coupler. They are in "married pairs" and have a wider, handicapped-accessible vestibule at the drawbar end.

Coach (70 coach seats, couplers at both ends)
Coach (70 coach seats, drawbar at one end)
Cafe (Cafe + 44 coach seats, drawbar at one end)
Business (36 business seats + 16 coach seats, drawbar at one end]

All business class cars, all cafe cars, and most coaches have drawbars necessitating they be in married pairs. Only some coaches have couplers on both ends. Typically, a cafe car is married to a coach, and a business class car is also married to a coach. Thus, these are the building blocks for a Midwest train:

[Coach] single coach
[Coach+Coach] married pair
[Cafe+Coach] married pair
[Business+Coach] married pair



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/26 06:51 by Tss515.

Thanks  for  all  the  rapid  answers!

Try as I might, I can not understand the justification for having any cars with a drawbar at one end. If anything, it significantly hampers operational flexibility. Perhaps this has been justified somewhere along the line, but I have missed it. Anyone have any insight?

So you have coach and business class seating in the same car. I presume the business class seating can be identified from where the car becomes 2+1 seating, but isn't that a bit confusing for the "regular passenger" and a bit of a PIA for the conductor? In just reading that - it seems kinda pathetic - just make the whole car business class - 2+1 seating - and do the upcharge for business calss. Oh, but wait - the seats are crap!!!!! 

jp1822 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So you have coach and business class seating in
> the same car. I presume the business class seating
> can be identified from where the car becomes 2+1
> seating, but isn't that a bit confusing for the
> "regular passenger" and a bit of a PIA for the
> conductor? In just reading that - it seems kinda
> pathetic - just make the whole car business class
> - 2+1 seating - and do the upcharge for business
> class. Oh, but wait - the seats are crap!!!!! 

The could pull the 2+1 seats out of scrap  legacy Acelas and there would still be ADA aisle width, but differing bureaucracies and ownerships can't think out of the box, so those nice seats will wind up in a land fill while Midwest passengers will be calling chiropractors and maybe starting a Flat Ass support group.

If a section reserved for wheelchair pasengers were in the food car the wide drawbar end would
not have been necessary.

It would be interesting to know how many wheelchair passengers ride, how often, etc.
The information would be usefull in knowing how much space needs to be provided.

I am all for drawbars, I think the diesel should be connected by a drawbar to the coaches.
There should be no couplers. Now, we should work on doing away with wheels !

Are  Venture   Xars  all  delivered?  Dor  Midwest?  Probably  will need  more. Maybe  'better'  seats!!

I understand that there are six Venture coaches and three Venture cab coaches coming soon for the Hiawathas. Personally I think the Midwest Consortium should have planned on cab coaches instead of having locomotives on either end of their trains. On the other hand, the bad-order rate on the Midwest Chargers has been so high that the decision they made has actually left them with enough Chargers for only one locomotive per train in most cases, and even then you find P42s filling in.

irhoghead Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Try as I might, I can not understand the
> justification for having any cars with a drawbar
> at one end. If anything, it significantly hampers
> operational flexibility. Perhaps this has been
> justified somewhere along the line, but I have
> missed it. Anyone have any insight?

---

longliveSP Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> irhoghead Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Try as I might, I can not understand the
> > justification for having any cars with a drawbar
> > at one end. If anything, it significantly hampers
> > operational flexibility. Perhaps this has been
> > justified somewhere along the line, but I have
> > missed it. Anyone have any insight?

"longliveSP" has it right, but with a little less detail than might be helpful. And maybe you've forgotten the design and rationale from many previous discussions.

The main reason for the drawbar is so that the car can have a full-width diaphragm directly connecting to the next car in the married pair, with a continuous pathway and flooring without end doors. This is commonly called a "gangway vestibule" or connection. That continuous pathway is also the wider width (34 inches, if memory serves) for accessibility. That enables persons with disabilities, particularly if in a wheelchair, to move between cars without the narrow doors and diaphragms of traditional cars. The internal effect is very much like articulated trainsets dating back to the early diesel articulated trainsets like the Zephyrs or UP streamliners, or light rail vehicles in wide use worldwide, including here in the US. 

There are interior doors, but well inside the car, which are sliding glass doors with an auto-opening mechanism. But they are just intended to give a break between the diaphragm area (with external boarding doors) and the restroom at the car end from the main seating area in the body of the car. They work quite well in that way, keeping the seating area quieter (even than with a traditional end door and diaphragm), and free from external temperature changes when boarding doors in the wide, spacious vestibule are opened at station stops. They are not intended to be "weather doors" sealing off the car from the outside elements,

It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to have that wide gangway vestibule with a traditional coupler. There would be no car-end "weather door" to routinely seal off the car interior as with a traditional vestibule. The very wide diaphragm that enables a continuous path between cars without end doors would have no closure, and the car interior would be exposed to weather and intrusion without any securement.

These are not intended to be "run of the train" features for accessibility, which has often been erroneously charged by several folks here on TO. They are not intended to give a disabled person at-will access to every single potion of the train. They are intended to give comparable access for handicapped persons for all services in a married pair of cars, or maybe three cars: namely Coach seats, Business Class seats, a wheelchair securement area with companion seat if needed, and Food Service features. In the same as any of us without a disability or mobility impairment have such access.

The Venture trainsets are typically arranged with a mixed Coach and Business Class car (a little odd, yes, but it works) next to a Cafe car, with a wide no-end-doors gangway vestibule between them. This enables a person with a mobility impairment, even it it's nothing more than just a little trouble walking due to age or injury, to have access to a handicapped seating area with a wheelchair securement if needed, or a regular Coach seat, or a Business Class seat, and a Cafe car. All services of the train are available to them as for any non-disabled passenger,  without having to navigate narrow end-doors and traditional vestibules. If an additional Coach-class car with a gangway vestibule is also used adjacent, that extends the range of access to another car, or maybe two more.

I have ridden on the Venture cars many times here in the Midwest where I live. These features work very well for persons with disabilities in giving them easy and full accessibility to the full range of services aboard the Amtrak Midwest trains. But they also really help non-disabled passengers. It is much easier and safer to move between cars without having to open and close car-end vestibule doors, or while walking through a narrow diaphragm between cars with moving floor plates over the couplers.

This also aids greatly in boarding and detraining, especially when managing luggage and carry-ons. The area by the boarding doors is much larger and more spacious - that helps everybody, a lot. And if you're carrying food or beverages back to your seat (which most passengers have always done, even when there was seating in the cafe car), it's an easy, continuous walk through the cars that are in married pairs, almost like a regular corridor. With no doors at car ends to open and close, and no traditional diaphragms to have to squeeze through. Only when you reach a car which is not in a married pair will  you have a traditional vestibule to navigate. And depending on where you are sitting, that may not even be necessary.

Bottom line: this is a win-win design for ALL passengers, whether they have mobility needs, or not.

Yes, there is one loss, and that is operational flexibility. The train becomes less completely modular than a traditional consist with cars with couplers at each end. That may be a problem. If one car in a married pair is bad-ordered, in all likelihood both cars in that pair will be set out for repair. It also makes for issues in switching and train make-up. This will require Amtrak to up its game for maintenance and car availability and train makeup practices. So far, it seems to have worked out okay, and the skillset to do this consistently without undue problems will continue to build and become more routine.

Yard switch crews and our good friends in Chicago Mechanical would probably prefer not to have to deal with this, and to have nothing but traditional cars with standard couplers and traditional diaphragms to deal with. That's understandable. But the married pair cars with those wide, easy-access gangway vestibules are a big service gain for customers - ALL customers. Passengers like them - I have heard many, many favorable comments. This might just need to be a case where Chicago Mechanical and switch crews just need to up their game because the new designs are a big win-win for ALL passengers.

I know this can be hard to understand and visualize. Don't know where you are, but I have had the impression from your previous posts that you may be in the Midwest. And if you're not there, such designs are coming soon to the East with the Airos, and I think (?) are on the west coast with Caltrains' Venture sets too. Wherever you are, the best way to understand how all of this works is just to ride on theses cars. Take a walk around, and compare the smooth traffic flow and ease of access for ALL passengers as compared to traditional cars. If you do that, I think you'll get the idea and appreciate the design. Even if if it admittedly makes for some potential issues on occasion for working railroaders.

Final disclosure: I am not nor have ever been a railroader, and I don't and never have worked for Amtrak. I am not a member of and am not in anyway associated with any disability rights group. I have full mobility with no impairments. I'm not an attorney. In sum, I'm just a Regular Joe trying to be fair-minded about this matter, and who can recognize a good design when I see it, even if that design which does a great service to ALL passengers also presents some potential operational problems for working railroaders.

Give it a try. I think you'll see how it works.

MC

Later additions:

1) Link to photo of an external view of the full-width diaphragms between married-pair Venture cars: 

https://www.trains.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/TRN_semipermanent_coupling_Johnston-600x900.jpg

2) Link to an interior photo of the wide no-end-doors gangway vestibule from a VIA Venture coach, very slightly different from Amtrak, but generally comparable. View is from just inside the interior sliding glass door (which is open, at the "Exit / Sortie" partition, with the full-size accessible restroom on the right, and the spacious gangway vestibule with no car-end doors ahead:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDqLQ2Xc19kfkKoeVE7SxDmfugv6As7LxVhjmqwyyvMBJde82WQFmDfkm48D66lNAyOnOHkBiI1xSwcZdnstGBpeGW877X1SaYLbDWcyAVbwSpDwT-1S6d5ZvObmH0Yeo0ayHGuxiuG25pwcGq8lz8I7JvWYVWJDBuUczwpa7LPVE-FpYiHt_0LEEaBRY_/s4032/IMG_0574.jpeg: 

3) Video of a Michigan-service Blue Water train with a walk-through of cars including the new Cafe, and a walk-through of a gangway vestibule between two married-pair cars at timecode 1:09 to 1:17 - copy and paste into your browser - direct YouTube links not enabled here on TO. 

https://youtu.be/hOxH0dmOXsU?t=68

MC



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 03/10/26 12:37 by ironmtn.

Thanks to each of you for the discussion of the diaphragm gangway. BrightLine has them, for the reasons stated. The entry vestibule from the platform is at floor level, with a ramp. Once in the vestibule, you can turn left or right to enter the coaches. A sensor opens the doors for you. This is exceptionally helpful for people with disabilities. There is a moving plate over the drawbar so the floor remains level.

Food service on the four car trains uses a small galley on the end of car 4, adjacent to the baggage section.  Beverages and light foods are brought to the seat by runners.

 

I am pretty sure Brightline uses single cars and their vestibules look plenty wide and accessible. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9dqlwqa_Ec?t=584

I had trouble actually confirming they are single, but trains have run with 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 10 cars.

In the midwest snow ingress is a big factor and sealing the inter-car connection means you can't have a crew operable coupler that could result in equipment damage.